


Black Out

by Ginny_Potter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Marauders era, Physical Pain (werewolf related), Pre-animagi, Remus POV, Sirius and Remus not romantically involved, Suicidal Thoughts, there are hints at Wolfstar though, they are fourteen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 19:59:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17587424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginny_Potter/pseuds/Ginny_Potter
Summary: After a particularly painful transformation, fourteen year-old Remus is in the Hospital Wing. Sirius sneaks in under James' Invisibility Cloak and asks Remus to promise him something.





	Black Out

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everybody!  
> This fanfiction was written at 2 am for my lovely friend Marta. She gave me the prompt: After Remus expresses suicidal thoughts after a particularly painful transformation, Sirius asks him to promise him to never act on them.  
> It should be the first of two, if I will ever manage to have some time to plan a more structured fic and not write 2500 words by heart at 2 am.  
> Anyways. I am not a native speaker so please tell me if you spot mistakes.  
> Marta, I hope you like it! <3  
> Enjoy!

_Winter 1974_

 

It felt as though he was hearing a high-pitched noise.

It was piercing and constant and unbearable. And it was everywhere: his arms, his legs, his ribs, even the tip of his toes. He didn’t know if it was possible to feel a sound, but he was. He was feeling it and it was everywhere and he couldn’t bear it, oh, he couldn’t… He gaped and the oxygen flowed in and the noise-feeling muffled. Oh.

He blacked out.

 

It was cold. The shack was cold. His body was cold. Everything _hurt_. He scratched the wooden floor, but he felt the ruined surface against his fingertips, against raw flesh. He didn’t have nails. There was just blood. He must have torn them apart. There was blood and flesh and a still savage part of him wanted to suck his own fingers, taste the blood. Another part was screaming. Another was growling. Another was crying and his mother was looking at him with tears on her pale cheeks and words he couldn’t hear on her mouth. His head was splitting in half.

 

_Wakeupwakeupwakeup_. He was biting his own lips; he could taste blood. The wolf was satisfied. When he tried to open his eyes, everything was blurry. _This must be how James feels every morning._ A nonsensical thought. A manic laugh. Of course it wasn’t. Unless James felt as if his skin was falling from his body, as if his limbs were angled all in the wrong way, as if his head was being hammered by a particularly angry northern god. He retched bile.

 

His right leg was clearly broken. It dangled down in an odd way. He had no idea how he ended up on the first floor, half on the landing, half on the stairs. One of the steps was destroyed: the splinters and slivers were piercing through his thigh and his hip. He could smell blood, could feel it. If he closed his eyes, he could hear it dripping like drops of rain. _Just… flow._ He thought. _It’s okay, let it go, let it go…_

 

“Remus? Oh dear.”

Remus tried blinking. He failed. The noise in his body was back. He tried saying it out loud. _I can feel a noise in my flesh._ How stupid did it sound? _It’s splitting my cells open, one by one_. How crazy did it sound? _I’m going crazy. I feel noises. I hear feelings. My eardrums must be busted. I think my fingers are all in the wrong direction. I’m a goblin. I became a goblin. A were-goblin._ He wanted to laugh. Was he laughing? Was that the reason he felt like his chest was too heavy for him to fill his lungs with air? Did he split open his sternum too? It was reasonable, after all, all his cells were splitting. His sternum was made of cells. Transitive property and all. _I am too cell-y for my body._ Too many cells. They split. They burst. _I bleed. I die. Yes, please. Make it stop._

“Breathe, dear boy, breathe.”

 

When he finally opened his eyes, he recognised the pointed arches of the ceiling. He was in the Hospital Wing. He wasn’t James Potter anymore. He could see. Good. That was… People were talking outside. He tried bending his head towards the sound, but a stabbing pain hit him and he whimpered. His head. Still splitting. There were bandages everywhere. He could feel them creeping up his arms, around his head, under his chin. He probably looked like a mummy. The Slytherins were going to have _so_ _much_ fun. His hip hurt, his thigh hurt. All of him hurt. It was a normal hurting, though. No more noises in his body. Just a deep, heavy feeling of hurt. Like the other times but ten times worse. Even his eyeballs hurt.

“You will see him tomorrow, Mr Black.”

Black. It was black if he closed his eyes. It was red suddenly. All red and gold: the Common Room. James was there, short sighted and messy haired James Potter. Peter was sprawled on the sofa, a model dragon he received for Christmas sleeping on his belly. Sirius was near the back of the Fat Lady portrait and was wiggling his eyebrows towards James.

James cleared his throat: “Moony, we have a very…” a smirk “ _serious_ question to ask you.”

Sirius smiled like it wasn’t the oldest joke in the world: “Very _serious_ , you should know everything I say is…”

“…always _serious_ , because I’m _Sirius_ , if you know what I mean.” Peter finished, poking the tail of his dragon, without looking at his friends. It was like he was reciting an old nursery rhyme.

Sirius shoot him a dirty look.

“A _serious_ question, Moony.” James rushed to get back at what he was aiming for “And a _Sirius_ question, because it was Sirius’ idea to ask.”

Remus – the _other_ Remus noticed suddenly – lowered the book he was reading: “I’m actively listening.” He said dryly.

James’ smile widened and his eyes sparkled behind his newly-acquired-too-big-for-his-face glasses: “When you transform…”

Remus and Remus looked around warily. In addition, the Remus on the armchair tensed too, noticed the other Remus. He wondered why, then he understood: this memory was quite old, second year probably. He wasn’t used to this yet.

“Nobody is here apart from us, Moony.” Sirius said from the door, oddly calming.

“When you transform,” James was becoming impatient, this evident joke was dragging on too much for his taste “do you forget everything? Do you…” he pointed at Sirius with his index finger and Remus and Remus and Peter found themselves following the direction to see Sirius climb outside the portrait hole in a very exaggerated fashion.

They all stared.

“… _Black_ out?” James concluded, clearly satisfied of himself.

Remus-on-the-armchair blinked, speechless.

“Oh, come on! It was fun! _Black_ out? Sirius _Black_? Did you get it? Remus? Remus?”

 

“Remus? Remus?! Can you hear me?! I’ll come back later!”

“Stop yelling, Mr Black! Ten points from Gryffindor! Out of the Infirmary! Out, Mr Black!”

Remus chuckled. _Black out. Black. Out_. It was funny. It was so lame it was funny. He stopped almost immediately when he felt his stomach churn and the sudden desire to throw up whatever was in his belly: awful potions and other meds probably. He tried moving his left hand, but he noticed with the corner of his eye that it was completely blocked in a sort of brownish glove that went up to his elbow. He breathed out, fighting the urge to cry.

“Mr Lupin?” Madam Pomfrey’s voice was still a bit brusque, after her argument with Sirius.

_A serious argument_. James Potter voice said in Remus’ head. He wheezed a laugh. _Hilarious_. Great. A part of his mind was pudding. He almost perceived his brain sloshing around. He was going mad. His madness was going to be bad puns and owl-y James Potter and Black outs. _Blimey_.

“Are you awake?”

He tried nodding, because he knew that his voice would probably sound much like a death rattle. Nodding was painful. He blinked. Blinking was painful. Even his eyelashes hurt. How was it possible?

“I knew it. That tornado, Sirius Black…” she muttered “And Potter and Pettigrew before him. Three tornados. Three tornados in my Wing.” She shook her head, but the corner of her mouth twitched. She was endeared.

_Blimey_.

Tornados, she said. He imagined James and Peter turning on themselves like car washing brushes. Car washing was fun. He went with his dad in their old Ford once, when they were on their way to London for his aunt’s wedding. He was five.

Crazy. He was going crazy.

Short sighted James Potter. Car washes. Peter’s toy dragons. _Sirius Black Out_.

Remus blacked out again. _Hilarious_.

 

“Moony?”

**_Look at the moon. How strange the moon seems! She is like a woman rising from the tomb. She is like a dead woman. One might fancy she was looking for dead things_** _._ He had seen the play the previous summer with his mom in Cardiff.

“Wha..? Moony? Can you hear me? You mumble gibberish.”

“… _rising from the tomb._ Sirius.” Remus opened one eye. He chose the one which hurt less. Just the eyeball, not the eyelashes.

Sirius’ head was floating mid-air.

_How strange the moon seems._ Not the moon. The stars. Star. _Sirius_.

Sirius was looking at him in an odd way. Was he worried? He moved swiftly and James’ cloak pooled at his feet.

“Try again, Remus.”

“Sirius.” He repeated. ‘t sounded right in his head.

He made a face: “You look like a Muggle boxer.”

“The dog?”

“The ones who hit each other.”

Ah. Right. _Then it’s better than I thought._ A long sentence. That was going to be hard to spell.

“Don’t speak.” Sirius’ hurried to say, then started talking like he wanted to fill a void “James and Peter got detention. We were all sneaking here, and we don’t fit very well under the cloak anymore, so I was going first underneath it and they were following but then Filch jumped on us from behind – there must be a secret passage near that huge mirror on the fourth floor we haven’t figured out yet. Long story short, they are squeezing pus out of Bubotubers right now.”

Remus blinked. With one eye, but he blinked nonetheless.

Sirius wasn’t looking at him directly and Remus knew he looked much worse than a Muggle professional puncher. He probably looked more like a butchered pig. Sirius’ grey eyes were dark – he had a pained expression on his face, like he couldn’t stand this. Remus understood him. He couldn’t either. Not anymore. A flash in his mind: Madam Pomfrey crouched towards him, her wand trembling in her hand, her eyes glossy like his mother’s. His left hand was a shapeless bloody lump. The splinters pierced through his skin like horns. The noise-feeling in every one of the molecules that made his useless flesh Remus John Lupin’s body. The pain. Unbearable pain. He didn’t want to experience that anymore. He felt like retching at the mere thought. He felt his heart starting to hammer in his chest, its rate increasing more and more; he felt sweat on his forehead, on his neck on every part of his body which wasn’t covered by gauze – it wasn’t much, actually. He was panting. _I don’t want to feel that anymore. Please, please no. No. No. I bled. I died. Did I die? It would be better. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make me–_

“ _Remus_.” Sirius barked.

_–Black out._

They looked at each other. Remus felt his heart slowing down. He was clutching something. He lowered his gaze: Sirius’ hand. The skin was white in the moonlight, where Remus’ thumb – the one that wasn’t broken, in the brownish glove, the one without its nail – was pressing so hard that he was stopping the blood flow. He looked into Sirius’ eyes again. They were still dark – like iron.

(There were times in which they were so clear they almost seemed light-blue. It was mostly in sunny days – summer at the Potters’, flying on the Quidditch pitch, reading Muggle poetry over Remus’ shoulder, pretending he didn’t like it. Remus wondered why he noticed such things.)

Sirius grasped his hand back, like they were challenging each other at arm wrestling. Remus winced and suddenly felt drained. He disentangled their fingers from the clasp. There should have been the half-moons of his nails on the back of Sirius’ hand. There weren’t because the wolf had torn his nails out. His fingertips were bandaged.

“Moo–”

_I bleed. I die. Yes, please. Make it stop._

“I should just end this.”

He didn’t realise he had said it out loud until he saw Sirius’ eyes blazing. He felt him grasp his head – his mummy-like bandaged head. He felt his palms pressing against the sides of his jaw and his thumbs pushing against his cheekbones. His right thumb was slightly callused from grasping his wand. Professor Flitwick always said his grip was too energic. James said it was because he wanked too much. It was a crazy memory to bring out just after expressing suicidal thoughts. But he could add it to the part of his brain which was pudding and was sloshing and dribbling out his nose probably. Owl-y James, Peter’s models, Sirius wanking. Merlin. He was definitely cuckoo.

“Remus.” Sirius was growling and Remus refocused. Sirius was close, so close Remus could see every wrinkle in his chapped lips “Remus, you have to promise me.”

Remus felt his breath hitch: Sirius’ eyes were like… was it stupid to think they were like lava? Not red, of course, but… There is that moment right before the volcano explodes when the lava is pushing beneath and the black-ish, dark grey-ish earth is tented like on the verge of blasting and… Sirius’ eyes were like that and they were fixed into Remus’ and he was speaking hurriedly, like he wanted him to understand a particularly important concept.

“P-promise you what?” he managed and Sirius’ grasp slackened a little.

They inhaled together. Then exhaled. Sirius’ callused thumb shifted on his cheekbone like a caress. Remus must have imagined it.

“Don’t you ever say that. Swear to me. Promise me you’ll never do something so stupid.”

Remus had to inhale and exhale once more before understanding what he meant. Right. Suicidal thoughts.

“I…”

“Promise me, Remus. I swear to you I will do anything to help, just…”

“Sir– ”

“Anything, Moony. I promise you, but you have to promise me you won’t ever, ever…”

“Yes, Sirius!” His throat hurt. Right. Because the wolf howls. So even that hurt. He wondered if there was a part of his body which didn’t.

Sirius seemed startled by his sudden half-yell. It wasn’t a real yell because his throat was hoarse from the howling. Maybe he could have made a good punk singer one day.

“I promise. No suicide. Got it.”

Sirius licked his chapped lips, then seemed to notice he was still fondling Remus’ head. He released him and crossed his hands in his lap. He looked awkward, as a first year waiting for detention from Professor McGonagall. Sirius never looked like that, even when he _was_ a first year and Professor McGonagall gave him detention every other week.

“No suicide.” Sirius repeated.

Remus could still feel his hands on his face. His pudding brain was suggesting asking Sirius if he could touch his cheeks again. Thank Merlin it was not James’ voice this time. That would have been disturbing. Well, _more_ disturbing.

Sirius cleared his throat, then the awkwardness seemed to pass because when they looked at each other again a new light was colouring his irises.

**_It is dangerous to look at people in such fashion. Something terrible may happen._ **

Sirius opened his mouth to say something, but then a light flickered at the end of the hallway.

“Professor Dumbledore,” Madam Pomfrey sounded sleepy “it’s so very late.”

“I apologise Poppy, I wanted to check on young Mr Lupin. Minerva told me this time was particularly challenging for the boy.”

Sirius scoffed, upset, and slipped under the cloak one second before Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey appeared on the threshold. They were both wearing night gowns; Dumbledore’s had smiley faces printed on it.

Remus half-closed his eyes, he could still see through his light eyelashes. The two were still approaching, but Remus knew that Sirius must have already slipped away. He looked at the open door and saw Sirius’ head floating mid-air. He winked, then covered himself with James’ cloak again.

**_…like the shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver._ **

Remus closed his eyes.

“Mr Lupin, are you awake?”

Maybe, just maybe, Madam Pomfrey would give him a new dose of sleeping potion.

Just enough to _Black out_. 

**Author's Note:**

> The play quoted is Salomé by Oscar Wilde in the English translation of Lord Alfred Douglas.


End file.
